My notes from the conference and a few of my own comments on top, accompanying is slides I found interesting. I am also paraphrasing a bit so accuracy is not 100%.
- James reckons Eric (our chief geologist) is probably worlds leading expert in Kaolin - this was said as a joke but James has said in the past the team in total the most expertise in HK nationally - I take the comment is in jest but I think he's dead serious.
- Some of the JV's still looking for a home - team is fully focused on GW. My personal opinion is that the company should get rid of these JV's quick smart, clean the corporate side up. I know James says they aren't really working on it as a company but I'd rather see them spun off.
- James speaks briefly about the chemistry of the Kaolin resource - showing his expertise here.
- Target is, as we all know, high-end ceramics. Porcelain is what we are targeting. He's made this abundantly clear.
- James goes on to speak about the natural nanotube form component of the halloysite being desirable for reasons I won't go into and if you don't know then you probably shouldn't be invested.
- GW blend is desired. Quite often end-consumers will either buy individual ingredients and blend them or purchase synthetic materials - we have it naturally.
- Moving rapidly towards trying to commercialize the Carbon Capture opportunity.
^ That was said without even breaking a smile - dead serious.
- End customers love our HK blend in ceramics and cannot source it elsewhere in the world. Again,
"probably" (as far as James is concerned) - ADN holds largest resource in the world (Of the blend).- James was involved in working with HPA as a young chemist - has worked on it throughout his 30 years.
- A deeper look into the region below. If you are new and reading this, go read up about Bronze Whaler/Tiger halloysite contents, they are extremely high.
- Some of the gravel they will dig up will help bituminize the road - this is James' comment. My comment is that it was a point of concern put to the council due to dust/air/dirt. I know this from reading council minutes. Is no longer an issue.
- The iron content of the HK makes a difference in the firing process. Ours is obviously very good, low iron.
- Normal price of Kaolin is $200-300pt.
- James says he's worked in 50 countries and has not seen the pure Kaolin as found in the dorsal fin area of the GW anywhere else in the world before. This is the highest purity kaolin he has seen.
- "Pectoral fin - we've got some interesting stuff that we haven't got to yet" - first time I have heard this mentioned obviously just naming a subsection - I think its the 70% halloysite ish domain they found from the recent drilling campaign. This is
my speculation. Time will tell what it actually is.
- This is my post from a while ago....
Post #:53076496- now confirmed below. This much was said in the quarterly report just past.
- The above picture pretty much confirms what I and a few others have said in multiple posts. The company has made this relatively clear in announcements too so it's no surprise.
- Our own designs have been drawn with our own engineers, then we have consultants on top of that to project design, and then independent technical consultants on top of that from pit to customer to make sure its all signed off on most accurate possible level.
- Plant design is so that we can double capacity. Just need to dewater a bit and hydrocyclone and we can double it relatively easily.
- Using an expensive high pressure magnet will help reduce the iron content but it will also help produce the highest quality HK in the world - this is their goal and the magnet seems to be essential to that.
- No tailings etc.
- Life being made easier in approval process due to ease of low environmental impact and high economic benefit to local community/state.
- Expecting to get mining approval back by October.
- James goes on to speak about only needing 6% of the farm land. I take it this is the Carey family's land. This is good news for SH.
- Full dust mitigation plans.
- 19 sets of consultants working on mitigating risks.
- James speaks more about the Japanese OT - they made thousands of porcelain items from the HK to be comfortable.
- Customers say "when are you going to be producing" and the company says well 18 months time and they say well come back when you're closer.
- Rationale has been explained before, I am not going to go over this.
- Normally James would go himself and get these deals done but COVID naturally disrupted this (this has been exemplified in his trips to China in the past).
- Pure HK goes from $700-5kpt
- Nobody in the world can produce the right tubular shape halloysite right now.
- Our best hole so far is 93% in GW area.
- We are working on purifying what we've got. Got a very large centrifuge that we will be installing in our pilot plant to try and get the purity up. If it gets up to 90% then it could be worth a lot more money. All the work we are getting with NNPL is at 40% Halloysite. If we can get to 80-90% then well..
I'm going to take a moment pause to write one comment.
The revised DFS figures as above are not unexpected but our first year of production is going to be very slow $$$ wise. If all (some) shareholders care about is the financials from the company metrics then you can expect the next 2-3 calendar years to be relatively boring and slow especially with MEP taking 25%. You can run the numbers post-DFS but I think it would be completely missing the point - the game here is a stable Ceramics based product so that we can work on getting to pure halloysite. If we can do that then who gives a f about ceramics. There is a market for the halloysite.
My hope is they either find more high purity halloysite in GW like they have just done (in my opinion this is the 70% component "pectoral fin" which they can centrifuge and purify then start selling it near immediately. This is where the upside is). Otherwise we just enjoy the normal base production case which is still likely to be world class in regards to risk for the patient.
Back to the video.
- Concrete pushing forward with some potentially big concrete players to see if we can come into a commercial arrangement. 1kg in 2-3t of concrete. Show's how effective it is.
- Low sovereign risk
- We know if it works here then it can work anywhere as Australia has some of the highest concrete standards in the world.
- CC pilot plant operational in 3-4 months - should capture 1.4t CO2 with 1T H medium.
- James is not convinced that other companies may have the right strategy with HPA but he thinks ADN may be able to. I think this comment is largely due James' expertise as a chemist.
Answer to Q1 - re: shutting down mines in China.
China shutting down kaolin mine due to policy change and lack of resources.
The biggest producer of HK has ran out of resources. They have signed offtake from us before but we don't particularly want to do that. Second largest resource is also closing/closed.
China still does see Australia as a great supply of great high purity minerals despite geographical issue.
James elaborates a bit on these issues within China in the past.
Answer to Q2 about how can you price Halloysite if halloysite is so scarce.
Answer is because of some of the smaller mines in the US and the $ that they were getting for this.
James knows these people and the mines before.
My post here:
Post #:53575249 and then the post that that one is quoting goes over one of these suppliers that James is talking about.
100 new patents approved for halloysite last year alone.
James gets contacted on a weekly basis around the world from people wanting to buy it.
It's a small market now but only due to no supply.
Answer to Q3 is in regards to water supply.
Dry process material was about $400pt.
Wet process plant uses 90% recirculated water which is what gets us to that premium feed.
Accumulating a bit of salt in the process too - can fix it up with some plant modifications.
Porcelain market the salt content doesn't matter as much.
We can increase water to local farmers by 30% while also using what we need by using such a well designed plant.
Q4 can blast through silcrete if required - if thick in some places. Can drag most of it away but pop it with a blast if need be. It's only 2-3m thick.
Andrew Harris who is a Mine Development Manager at Olympic Dam from BHP asking about targeting different proportions of halloysite and asking about other separation or upgrade that they can manage to do yet or commercializing other than centrifuging.
James talks a bit about high purity halloysite from Imery's halloysite mine and that the purity is very high but it's a prismatic shape - selling into China. Goes for about US$1000-1500. James goes on further to discuss being able to do centrifuging and other flotation methods to get to quite high purity levels but it's not commercial.
You need to find halloysite that you can purify with a simple process. GW deposit that doesn't respond very well to centrifuge. You can concentrate to 2mc size which is getting to 40% halloysite - but hammerhead can get to about 80% - not exactly certain why, shape/length/wall/charge of the tubes all makes a difference.
CL 99.6% purity with beautiful tubes - high surface area. Some seem to grow rather than just roll up.
Even in our resource we see them grow not just roll up - we are still learning about it all the time.
Since we've started talking about it we've got followers who don't know how to use it.
I will make one comment above as there was some trolling by a bloke in the halloysite thread the other day - there is some merit to his comment due to what I have discussed above regarding it being quite difficult to separate and purify the halloysite but also due to the comments above it looks to not really be much of an issue in the scheme of things. I've made my mind up on this topic and am sick of typing so am going to leave it there.
DYOR GLTA
(20min delay)
